AUSD Budget: A New Parcel Tax? (Part 3 of 5)

On Monday I wrote about how the district is currently facing $17 million drop in state funding by 2012-2013.

On Tuesday I wrote about how the one way the district can stay solvent in the face of that loss of funding is to close schools — up to 50 percent of the schools, in fact — across the Island, as discussed at last night’s board meeting (and you can read about that on Alameda Patch and The Island today). Unfortunately, since even widespread closures won’t solve the budget problem entirely, program cuts would also need to be made.

So if school closures aren’t ideal, the other way the school district can solve the budget crisis is by raising money via a parcel tax to replace Measures A & H. As such, even as the district moves forward on plans to close schools, it is planning on putting another parcel tax on the ballot in March to prevent these closures.

Just what that parcel tax would be — i.e., how it would be structured and how much residents and businesses would pay — won’t be decided until later in the fall, after a series of public meetings have taken place to get community feedback.

In the meantime, district staff is running the numbers again on just what kind of parcel tax might work. But several business groups, including the Alameda Business Alliance (a new group of local businesses and business associations in town),also are working on parcel tax proposals that they might support.

Those proposals will have to mesh with the district’s needs, of course, and ABA, at least, plans to meet up with district representatives to talk about possible parcel taxes “in the near future,” local facilitator Jeff Cambra promised me yesterday. “We expect for there to be some back and forth on what might work.” (You can read about that effort in Cambra’s article on The Island here.)

APLUS, by the way, which ran the Measure E campaign, isn’t working on a proposal for the next parcel tax’s structure and rate. Instead, APLUS is helping to get a new campaign organisation up and running for the next parcel tax campaign. You can read about those efforts here, but I’ll write more about the new group when it actually launches.